with acceptance comes happiness

The first two pieces for the box are out and de-molded and brushed off but not had the vinegar soak yet, giving them a day to settle first. They look good. I try for certain color and intensity when filling the mold but it's always a surprise after firing. All three colors turned out to be stronger than I was going for which is OK, probably because I used some powders and sifted the finest particles out of the frit. I'm determined to be OK with, to accept the way everything turns out, not harbor any disappointment, as long as they cast completely and maybe even if they don't. It depends. I'm mostly concerned about the feet.

I had quite a bit too much glass in the inlay mold and will have to grind off over 1/8” thickness but the top I did a better job of calculating and only have to grind off about 1/16”.

Here's the test piece, the face with flowers on the heart. This is just brushed off as well and needs to be flattened on the bottom so more grinding there but that will wait.

All the corals, the crab, and the four feet are currently in the kiln. I wanted to do the corals and crab in one firing and the feet in another but Marc put them all in together, not sure how many firings he will get out of the kiln before the top and door elements crap out. They might not. We're really just casting these pieces on a wing and a prayer. Still one more firing after this one for the body of the box which I've decided to do in a light aqua. I hope the finished piece all comes together with so many elements and different colors with the white top and feet.

One of the regulars at Abby's yoga class recently decided to get certified as a yoga instructor through an enrichment program for teachers and students connected to the ISD where she works (not really sure of the details) and her 'final' is in a few days so she practiced on us last Wednesday, her first try to actually lead a class, and she started out by saying that she wanted us to focus on acceptance during the class, acceptance of what our bodies can or can't do at this particular time, acceptance of the things in our lives, that without acceptance there cannot be happiness, that happiness comes only through acceptance. I thought that rang true. Maybe not happiness because happiness is fleeting but certainly contentment and isn't contentment really what we want in our lives, content with who and what we are and have?

It certainly applied to our lives as working artists. We had no guaranteed income, living basically hand to mouth. It varied month to month, year to year depending on how much work we had. Some months we had no income, some months we managed, some months we were in high cotton. Part of being able to live as we did was to accept the fact that this was going to be the way of it, probably would never be able to afford a lot of things, the 'stuff' my kids' peers' families had, expensive playthings mostly, the stuff our culture told us to want. We always managed the basics and the important stuff and now and then something special. When our peers were double and triple locking their doors at all times, living in fear of being robbed, we lived with our door open to the world with no such worries. By the time we could afford to buy stuff, we really didn't want to, used to a simpler life.

Happiness through acceptance, accepting what our chosen path allowed us, freed us from being jealous of our friends' successes, from living fearfully. Well, mostly. There were times when I resented an artist's success who had a working spouse that supported them, when someone got into a show and I didn't, when a friend got a commission that I thought I was going to get, when other artists sold work at shows and I didn't, etc. which only made me unhappy and depressed. Acceptance is a practice, like yoga. And when I practice it, I'm happier.

Well, once again it was my night to provide dinner last night. I did a simple meatless stir fry with naan.

Onion, garlic, celery, carrot, broccoli, yellow squash, and cabbage. After this cooked down a little more I pushed it all to the sides and added 2 beaten eggs in the middle and scrambled them, slowly mixing in the vegetables, added the cooked short grain brown rice and some soy sauce. It was really good.

 

two steps forward and one step back

Well, the kiln is only half working. First was a programming error...heating 5˚ an hour instead of 500˚ an hour for that segment. Marc reprogrammed it, all seemed well until we checked it again later at 1370˚ with the FTH error message...failure to heat, which meant it couldn't heat up as fast as it was programmed for. Front loading glass casting kilns have heating elements in the top, all three sides, and the door. Turns out only the top and door elements are coming on which means it takes longer to heat up. We think we can still get the pieces cast for this box with the kiln as is, it will just take a longer firing schedule. Once we've got all the pieces cast then he can take his time trying to figure out why the side elements aren't coming on when they're on the same circuit as the door, especially if he has to replace the coils.

The test firing is done, the face with flowers on a heart mold cool enough to take out of the kiln and it looks fine, has a little devitrification which is why it looks cloudy at the point, probably from being at a particular temperature for too long.

So the first two pieces for the box, the inlay and the top, are now in and the kiln started. Fingers crossed!

Chloe has totally ignored the scratchy cardboard, even with a sprinkle of catnip. And I'm still not convinced this cat isn't pregnant. I swear her little nipples are getting bigger and her belly is firm though when I squish around on her tummy, I don't feel any lumps in there either.

Today's predicted high is 98˚ with a real feel of 107˚. Currently 91˚, real feel 103˚. No rain forecast til Friday.

I'm at loose ends waiting for these two pieces to come out which will be several days. I should be doing a drawing or a new watercolor but I'm sort of paralyzed with indecision. I've got two books from the library and can't even settle down to read for more than 30 minutes at a time.

recently hatched baby anole.

no kiln, no rain, no worms, and other miscellania of my life

We've determined that getting the newer kiln fixed is really our only option. The old kiln is old, rusting out old, door falling off old, really no point in trying to replace the controller, a $600+ part, even if that part is still available. The problem with the newer kiln is a wire became disconnected from the harness that is attached to the motherboard. I've got the names and numbers of two people in Houston that do kiln repair and it turns out we knew one of them from way back. So now not sure what happens next. Marc may go over and take another try at getting the wire in the notch to hook it back up but it's so hot in that part of the shop especially with the high temps we're having. I'm for just calling those guys and hauling it in to Houston. I have to empty the truck bed of downed limbs and branches first though which I guess I'll do tomorrow if the truck starts. We don't use it much so the battery tends to go dead. Marc had it hooked up to a battery charger the other day. We've sort of been putting off unloading the tree debris until we burn what's already there but it doesn't look like the burn ban will be lifted anytime soon. Still dry dry dry.

So dry the cotton is shriveling in the fields. It perked up after that inch of rain we got weeks ago but looks even worse now.

I took Lily, for want of a better name, to the vet Monday for a general check-up. She was not happy being shoved into the cat carrier and yowled and tried to claw her way out practically the whole time in the car and while we were waiting. I thought this is not good, she's not going to be at all cooperative with the vet but when he opened the door to the cat carrier she came out and was fine, let him examine her. She's less than a year old, not pregnant yay, she has ear mites which they will flush out when they spay her. I thought she was going into heat because Monday, she was a demon to get out, yowling now and then, so I scheduled the spay for the 17^th but yesterday and today she's just been her laid back self, not a peep out of her, no fighting her back from the door every time someone went in or out so I'm going to call and see if I can get her in sooner.

The other thing I accomplished so far this week was finally getting my email accounts on the desktop squared away. You might remember that I updated some things weeks ago and one of the results was that to make my mail accounts active I had to enter the password which I ignored hoping it would just fix itself. Well, it didn't and fuck all if I could remember what it was and of course it was one of the few I don't have written down so I tried the current, nope, I tried the one before, nope, and the one before that, nope. Well, fuck. So then I googled how to find passwords stored on your computer which ultimately led me to a window that listed the account and a box that said 'show password' and when I clicked on it the box it opened another window that wanted the password to show me the password. Really? Went through that rigamarole over and over, went through system preferences over and over. After about three hours of frustration I had managed to somehow at least download the mail from the business account but it wouldn't let me send. One last try, I opened the internet accounts window in system preferences one more time and typed in the current password we're using and...it worked! Unfuckingbelievable. I bet I typed that password in over a dozen times for each account to no avail. Well, whatever, the computer gods got tired of fucking with me I guess and let me have access to both my email accounts though it wasn't like I didn't have access at all as I could get it through the mail function on my phone. Anyway, glad that's been dealt with.

Sunday, I cleaned the filter to the turtle pond. I admit it had been way too long but when I cleaned the muck off the charcoal fiber layer and the foam layer both were just filled with little red worms about 1/2” long. Ick, never seen that before not in all the years we've had that filter so I set them out in the sun to roast their little hides. 

Went out later to see if they were shriveling up and ants were crawling all over both pieces. Monday morning I went out and those ants had cleaned out every single speck of those little red worms. Good job!

So, I had to go to Walmart to get dog food since the grocery store hasn't had it in weeks, supply chain problems I guess, and I walked through the women's clothing section to get to the dog food and saw this.

What decade is this? In the women's section no less.

A few garden shots...

Spider lily

Gulf fritillary on the Mexican bird of paradise aka pride of Barbados

things were going so well and then FUBAR

Mornings are in the 80s, the coolest it's gonna be all day so I started the sprinkler rounds and Sunday morning I weeded three small sections (in three different forays) and cut back the gone by elephant garlic blooms and the 3 clumps of tired done blooming spiderwort, cut back more of the purple coneflowers and in about 30 or 40 minutes sweat was just dripping off me.

As noted I only got the mold for the top filled on Friday and Saturday I got the mold for the inlay filled. It took me pretty much all day because I spent a lot of time sifting out the finest particles of the size 'fine' frit of the colors I didn't have in powder form as I wanted to use a combination of frit and powder. Here's the colors in place before I added the white back layer. The pink and purple will turn their true colors during the firing and the green should darken.

So that leaves the mold for the body of the box. I've left it for last because I still hadn't decided what shade and intensity of blue I wanted though I had been leaning to a medium aqua. But Saturday night it occurred to me that maybe a pale blue would be better to set off the colors of the inlay. Anyway, I was determined to decide yesterday as I am ready to finish step 3 of 6 (model making, mold making, filling molds, firing in the kiln, grinding and polishing, fabrication) but when I got over to the studio using my color samples to find a good color I just gave up. I think I need to see the inlay after it's cast and then decide so to that end I brought the inlay mold and the top mold over to go in the kiln.

Aaaaand...the controller on our 22 year old corroded hinge and door falling off kiln won't let Marc change the firing schedule. He thinks it will turn on but there is no way of knowing if it will run through the current program without error. And anyway, the current program is not a good one for these pieces. The program/firing schedule in the controller is what determines how fast or slow the kiln heats and cools and how long it stays at particular temperatures. We have a newer kiln that went haywire 6 years ago and shot up to 2300˚ and quit working. Marc made two attempts to fix it replacing certain parts but no luck so we just have been using the older kiln. The manufacturer is in a town outside Dallas, 5+ hours away and they can do the repair if we drive the newer kiln up there. Before we do that we are trying to see if we can get a used controller to replace the bad one on the old kiln or see if there is someone in Houston that can repair the newer one. So maybe not beyond all repair. All this takes time of course so I doubt I'll be finishing the coral box in time for the anniversary show In October. 

On top of that, my jaw was being wacky and I nipped the inside of my lower lip three times yesterday!

What a fucked up day.

rangoon creeper